


Threefold

by Jixico



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Canon Compliant Major Character Death, F/M, Mourning, Religious References, Wicca, triple goddess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 09:39:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5123072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jixico/pseuds/Jixico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many wiccans worship the threefold goddess; the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone.<br/>Each represents a phase of a woman's life. Birth, life, and death are one within her.</p><p>Valkyrie Cain is familiar with all of these things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Maiden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Maiden represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the promise of new beginnings, birth, youth and youthful enthusiasm, represented by the waxing moon" - Wikipedia

Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Mages scoffed over their pints of lager at that one. Fletcher sometimes just sneered into his glass while the rest of the bar babbled around him. 

It was a filthy place. The wonky wooden tables were caked with grease and stuck to glasses and shirt sleeves. The windows were dark and populated by spiders. A single fly orbited patrons' heads like it was a permanent resident. The bartender, a huge, hairy man with a neck tattoo, cleaned cups with a brown rag. Fletcher was pretty sure it wasn't brown when it first began its life. 

Life. He hunched further over his glass. Had it really been a year? Damn. 

Of course they'd never had a funeral for her. Barely anyone considered it a real loss of life. But to him, if it looks like a girl, walks like a girl, and talks like a girl, its a fucking human girl with a heart and mind and soul and not just some poor cardboard cut-out stand-in for someone else. 

Fletcher took a swig and grimaced. He stared at the wall. A sun-bleached poster of INXS stared back at him from across the bar. He rubbed his palms into his eyes. 

"Okay." He said eventually. The bartender looked up.  
"Not you, keep wiping that filthy glass."  
The big man scowled at him but Fletcher barely cared. He stalked out of the bar and in the next moment he was on the beach. 

It was a fucking beautiful day and Fletcher hated it. Sunny days were no good for feeling bitter. Pristine white beaches and gently rolling waves never put anyone in the mood for mourning. At least the beach was empty. 

He whipped his phone out of his pocket and began scrolling through his photo library. So many pictures of his hair, too many creative shots that only a teleporter could hope to capture. It took him far too long to get to a picture of her. 

But when he did his eyes burned with hot tears. She'd be like this in his memory forever, frozen in time and forever young. He just felt angry because it was just unfair.

It was unfair that nobody could see the differences between her and Valkyrie. It was unfair that nobody tried to understand. They treated her as a second class citizen, worse than a dog. It was unfair that he was the only one to mourn the loss of this special person, and unfair that he never got to bury her like she would have liked. 

It was unfair that her body was being used like a shell by someone else. 

Fletcher picked up a stone from the sand and threw it into the water. He tried not to think of what that body was doing now.


	2. The Crone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Crone represents wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon." - Wikipedia

Darquesse stood panting over the body of a faceless one. Well, she used the term _body_ loosely. The faceless ones were hard to describe. Honestly she didn't care to describe them at all. She didn't have the inclination, nor the time. Between running for her life, being beaten to a bloody pulp, repairing herself, being beaten to a bloody pulp again, and seeking opportunities for retaliation, she simply didn't have time for that sort of thing. And also looking at them made her feel sort of uncomfortable. 

But right now, at this moment, she actually had a moment to think. A moment all to herself, because she had actually managed to kill one of them. Actually. For real this time. It was 100% truly and fully _dead_. She reached out with all of her senses and didn't detect a peep. 

A weird bubbly sort of feeling tingled us her spine and across her belly. The weird bubbly feeling erupted from her mouth with a rough and strangled peal of laughter. 

God. She had gotten so strong. 

When she left her dimension behind she thought that was it. How could anyone possibly top being an all-powerful, trans-dimensional, über magical super-being? And then she met the faceless ones and was figuratively gutter stomped into nothing but a hot mess. Then finally. Finally, after god knows how long, she'd managed to corner one and kill it. 

Darquesse did a little dance. 

And then she felt a good portion of her head being ripped away from the rest of her body and she immediately slipped back into survival mode. 

Yes, she was stronger than before. But now the faceless ones were angry.


	3. The Mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Mother represents ripeness, fertility, sexuality, fulfilment, stability, power and life represented by the full moon" - Wikipedia

"Stephanie, have you ever thought about children?" Melissa Edgely asked calmly, politely ignoring her daughter spitting a mouthful of tea all over the kitchen table and coughing herself to tears.

"Children?" Valkyrie choked. "I don't even have a boyfriend!"

Valkyrie's mum gave a small smile. "Just thought I'd check. You're old enough. You have enough money. The only thing missing is a man, and you might even have one of those without us knowing."

"Which I don't."

"But you could."

"Except that I don't."

"I'm just saying.Your father and I want grandchildren at some point, from at least one of our children. At the moment your the likeliest contender simply because you're the oldest."

"Mum please tell me you're not giving me The Talk."

Melissa just shrugged and sipped her tea. 

"Be glad your father's not here. He wanted to be the one doing this, not me."

Valkyrie buried her face in her hands. 

"All we want to say is that at any point, if you decide to have children, we'll be here ready to help."

"Thanks mum" She muffled from beneath her hands. When her phone buzzed she almost leapt to her feet in relief.

"That'll be Skulduggery. There's a case. See you later?"  
She downed what was left of her tea in one gulp and hugged her mother goodbye, nicking one last biscuit from the plate before she scampered out the door.

The bentley was rumbling out the front waiting for her. She climbed in while wolfing down the biscuit.

"How's your mother?"

"Uh."

Skulduggery turned to her.  
"That bad? Oh, you're all red."

"Oh my god, just drive."

"I don't think you've ever come back looking like this before." He said, shifting into first gear.

"I don't think I've ever had a conversation like that one before." 

"That bad huh?"

"She asked if I wanted children."

He glanced at her. "But you're a children."

"Not any more."

"Are you sure?"

"Mostly."

They sat in silence for a while as Skulduggery drove them towards the Sanctuary. Valkyrie flicked through the photos on her phone.  
Eventually his smooth, low voice cut the silence.

"Do you want children?"

"What? Maybe. Yes, eventually. But…"

"But?"

"Well, it's complicated. I…"

She stared out the window, watching as houses grew dingier, and then sparser. 

"I've already sort of produced two living beings, haven't I? One of them killed the other, and tried to kill me, and a bunch of other people. And the other one…"  
Valkyrie sighed.

"I'm not sure I could be a mother. After everything that I've done and- Well, Just after everything."

Skulduggery sat really still in the drivers seat.

"And if you were having a baby you'd be pretty useless to me for a while. But then I might end up with two sidekicks. I'll have to weigh the pros and cons on this and get back to you later with my conclusion."

Valkyrie laughed and punched him, and he quipped at her about safe driving practices and how abusing the driver certainly wasn't one of them.  
And she felt a little better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thankyou for reading. 
> 
> I was considering adding a part 4 with Skulduggery as the male counterpart, the Horned God. If I can think of something purposeful enough I'll tack it onto the end.


End file.
